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Dimes, Dollars, Quarter Bills …

Cash payment is wrong according to David Gauke. They want to talk about money? So let’s start to talk about money. Let’s not talk about the tenner you bunged your mate the sparky but the £13 TRILLION outlined in the most detailed estimates yet of the size of the offshore economy in a new report, The Price of Offshore Revisited (see The Price of Offshore here)

We need to begin to make the case for changing Scotland into one about transforming our understanding of economics and of values and of how money is organised. David Gauke chose to ignore the revelations from this weekend that a global economic elite of less than 100,000 people hoard over £13 trillion pounds in offshore tax havens[3], instead focussing his moral condemnation on the cash in hand economy of cleaners, plumbers and builders.

Gauke’s comments came after an earlier announcement about plans to ‘name and shame’ aggressive tax avoiders. This statement comes barely a month after the government announced plans to slash a further 10,000 jobs from HMRC[4], as part of £3 billion worth of cuts to the tax department introduced by the Coalition.

Kat Templeton, a spokeswoman from UK Uncut said:

“Everyone knows that the likes of Vodafone are the real problem not people who pay carpenters and cleaners a few quid in cash. The government should be focusing their efforts on getting back the missing billions of tax dodged by the super-rich. There is £13 trillion currently sitting in tax havens, more than the combined GDP of the USA and Japan. Plumbers, builders and carpenters didn’t cause this, companies like Vodafone, Tesco, Boots did.”

Clamping down on tax avoidance by super-rich corporations and individuals offers a genuine alternative to the cuts to our vital public services, which have driven us back into recession

As the people behind the Producia Proposal suggest, this is about a fictional set of values:

There’s lots of types of Triodos’s … credit unions … this is an advert but it’ also the start of a conversation about banking, finance, growth an economy…

New figures from ethical bank Triodos show even just £10 from every UK adult saver – equivalent to £386m* – could be enough to start to help change the current UK banking system.

£386m is £100m more than the fine handed out to Barclays for the Libor scandal, the same amount as the total RBS bonus pot for 2011, almost double the failed Project Merlin SME lending agreement, or almost enough to pay for the construction of the Shard in London. £20 from every saver would equate to the potential fine faced by HSBC for money laundering.

Or, if every saver moved £100, that’s £3.9bn – almost enough to pay for half the cost of the Olympics.

As we approach five years since the demise of Northern Rock the banking scandals continue, but have we really seen much change? With the launch of a new film entitled ‘Small. The new big’, Triodos Bank wants to encourage people to think about the power of their savings in helping to shape a fairer and more sustainable banking system.

Well … that was an advert and we don’t really do adverts on Bella, but we thought it would be a good way to kick off our season on new economics, beyond the POUND STERLING v EURO nonsense.